How People Become Haunted Houses: A Piece Co-Authored by Nell Crain of Hill House
I am sitting on the couch with the person I love most in the world, and I have never been happier. A sob rips through my chest and I do not know anymore. Time is confusing. Jumping back and forth between what we know and what we cannot hope to anticipate, the past is safe. Look, there behind the windowpane of my own memory is someone who I might know. I think. Even if I do not know them now the shape is vague, womanish.
A hand runs through my hair, and I remember I am supposed to exhale. Do you ever forget how breathing works? Old houses only exhale. They creak. When we talk about houses, some people like to say they are alive. As a girl, I was always told that I was sensitive. No one ever tells you what that means until you move into a house that is so incredibly loud and I know that it was alive in that same way I was because how else would it have been able to scream if it were not for its lungs?
Here is the thing about the people who would become haunted houses- they look move-in ready. If you were to ask an estate agent about the property value of the person standing just in front of you, you would not be surprised that they have nothing to disclose. That is the thing, only tragedies in recent memory count when people think about moving in because they forget about the ghosts. You there, sitting curled around a blue light screen reading, sometimes, you, too can feel the cold spots just below your own wrists. If you close your eyes and think hard enough, you can still feel your own fingers that you know are there at the end of your arm, dangling just beyond the edge of your sweater. I am sorry. No inspector is going to be able to find any gaps in windows and there is no other explanation for the way you shiver when you think of the past. I do not know you. You may have a ghost too, but I cannot draft your story.
A candle with a wood wick flickers on the bookshelf and from the kitchen a song about wisteria plays softly in the background. In my periphery, I see the ghost dance behind my partner who stands at the stove. Tiptoeing closer. Or, maybe, further away than before. It smells of a meal my mother used to make and ten yards away at the front door of my childhood is the ghost. I wish I could tell you that there is more shape to them now, something to distinguish them from the many trees of the wood that surround the house. When I was five, before we moved, I had the dream for the first time. Our town is known for having willow oaks. Big old trees that were here before me and will be here after me. I wonder if they dream of what it would be like to set fire to themselves too.
The muscles in my hand are not able to twitch. I am stuck. Trapped. I try to scream but I cannot. It is dark and I see you standing to turn on the light, but something is wrong. Jumping back and forth. I already know what is happening and I cannot pull you back into the past. I would turn you into a ghost right now at this moment if I could, but I am not a haunted house, I have nowhere to keep you. Keep you like this. Your neck snaps. Everything is dark. There is not a noise I can make that is loud enough to cover the sound of a breaking heart.
It is slow, the way the melody builds. The dead though, they call me home with soft songs and confusing footwork. I dance through my own memories, and when they feel unfamiliar my ghosts comfort me. You do not have to claim a ghost when you are one. I drop through my own timeline. At the end of the rope, my own memories press against my sternum. Exhaling is not enough. For now, I scream. Everyone I loved is here.
My love and I are sitting beside one another on the couch working. Life has mundane moments too and that is when it gets you. I feel a tear slip down my cheek. In the armchair sits my ghost. I will claim it, I suppose, in the same way people claim family with a last name. Passively. Absent-mindedly. A thigh presses against mine and I am so glad for the love I have. It keeps me warm. Breathing. I hear the charred skin of my ghost pull and tear as they pull their legs up to sit crisscross, watching me. A haunted house feels like an oxymoron, for now. My ghost knows it. Houses are meant to be lived in and haunts are for the dead. My chest starts to get tight, and I know I need to scream, but for now, I exhale. I hear something click in the lap of the person beside me. For now, my ghost slips away like ashes in the wind. I breathe. Everyone I love is here.
